Innovian charting system

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Monty Python

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Today the Innovian charting system was installed in our ORs. We didn't ask for it; we had no voice in the decision.

Anyone have any suggestions for user-friendly interface with this system, based on personal experience?

To make matters more interesting the Innovian isn't hooked into Essentris or any other database. It's strictly for anesthesia charting only. We have to put our regional block note in Essentris (on the circulator's desktop, across the room from the head of the OR table).

I see this as a major distraction, and a roadblock to efficient room turnover. In PACU where we close out our Innovian there's only one desktop with the Innovian icon installed and guess what -- it's the ward clerk's computer. We have to dislodge her each time we need to access Innovian.

Anybody with Innovian experience please tell me the sky is not falling and that this system is at least tolerable. How many cases did it take before you became fluent with it? Thanks.

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I've used Innovian since day 1 of my residency. Haven't used any other automated anesthesia charting systems, but I prefer Innovian to paper.

We've had Essentris for maybe 6 or 8 months now. I dislike it for a long list of reasons and avoid it as much as I can.

There's no interface between Essentris and Innovian, but I don't see that as a real disadvantage. I guess it'd be nice if Innovian pulled a few bits of information like patient weight, ASA class, etc from my Essentris preop anesthesia eval but honestly that only takes about 10 seconds of clicking.

Supposedly the link between the S3 OR scheduling system and Innovian is being worked on - after that, demographic info ought to be imported. Where I was a resident, a preop nurse went into Innovian 2 or 3 days before scheduled cases and manually entered all the demographic info. That was nice.

I don't use Essentris for my regional notes. I just put them in Innovian as a 2nd method. We just got a mobile Innovian station for preop so when that's hooked in the OR record will also have vitals during the block captured.

Innovian doesn't hurt our turnover. We just hit print in the OR, hit close, and pick up the record from the PACU printer. I hand write a set of PACU vitals on the printout and I'm done. PACU nurses use Essentris.


My only real gripe about automated charting is the way vital sign artifacts are permanently charted, necessitating a narrative explaining the artifact.

It's kind of a pain during super short cases (BMTTs especially) where the charting takes longer than the procedure and you don't have two free hands to mess with the computer. With paper at least you could pre-chart almost everything before you even got to the OR. But even this problem can be mitigated with good custom environments and things tied to the quick events toolbar.

The real benefit I think is in cases that are very busy in the beginning where the patient needs your full attention. Hit trend when you walk in the room, do the induction, tube, lines, etc and the charting is 90% done already. Then there's no need to catch up on 40 minutes of vitals by scrolling through the monitor history. Innovian does this fine.
 
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Supposedly the link between the S3 OR scheduling system and Innovian is being worked on - after that, demographic info ought to be imported.

Our instructor said the S3 interface will be online when we finish user training and go live in January. That would be helpful.

I don't use Essentris for my regional notes. I just put them in Innovian as a 2nd method. A great idea .. I'll have to stress that to our chief who unfortunately wants all the blocks in Essentris as an anesthesia procedure note.

Innovian doesn't hurt our turnover. We just hit print in the OR, hit close, and pick up the record from the PACU printer. I hand write a set of PACU vitals on the printout and I'm done. That is a fabulous idea. Thanks. It will remove the need for us to dislodge the PACU ward clerk from her computer to access the only Innovian icon in PACU. Again great thought ... thanks for all your hints!
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Our instructor said the S3 interface will be online when we finish user training and go live in January. That would be helpful.

I wouldn't hold my breath for that to happen in January.

My current hospital only got Innovian a couple months ago. While they were here installing everything, they got the S3 --> Innovian import to work temporarily with some 'hack' where S3 would export to some shared directory and Innovian would poll that directory every few minutes for new data. At present we're still waiting for a more permanent solution.

We know the data transfer is possible but it's not working yet. If it DOES work for you in January, please let me know so I can hassle the IT guys about it some more.
 
In San Diego we went online a couple months ago. Biggest DOD roll out. Mrs. Draeger even came from Germany to the ribbon cutting. Took a while for every one to get comfortable with the system. Overall though, its gone pretty well. I don't think our poor supply officer slept for the first month after we started using it.

I was lucky that the VA in the system I trained in had used Innovian and its precursor product Saturn for years. They were very savvy with the system. Experience at NMCSD has been good. The mobile rollstands have been very good for doing blocks and offsite stuff. Also, as pgg mentioned printing from the room can be a big help. We have separate computer in the pacu for printing, but frequently there is a long line.

Our supply officer is working on a way to export the innovian record to essentris as a .pdf. I don't know how that's going. We did something similar at the VA, anesthesia records exported to CPRS as .pdfs.

While I was a resident the university and county hospital started using docusys. We had done a lot of customization with that system, so it fit our hospitals well. Documentation requirements for our billing nazis was crazy. Staff had to sign something like 6 electronic attestations for billing. Not an issue at the VA, or in DOD. Which did I like better? Innovian is quicker to pick up. You could do more with docusys, once you figured it out, but it was definitely tougher to learn.
 
Today the Innovian charting system was installed in our ORs. We didn't ask for it; we had no voice in the decision.

Anyone have any suggestions for user-friendly interface with this system, based on personal experience?

To make matters more interesting the Innovian isn't hooked into Essentris or any other database. It's strictly for anesthesia charting only. We have to put our regional block note in Essentris (on the circulator's desktop, across the room from the head of the OR table).

I see this as a major distraction, and a roadblock to efficient room turnover. In PACU where we close out our Innovian there's only one desktop with the Innovian icon installed and guess what -- it's the ward clerk's computer. We have to dislodge her each time we need to access Innovian.

Anybody with Innovian experience please tell me the sky is not falling and that this system is at least tolerable. How many cases did it take before you became fluent with it? Thanks.

Any anesthesia record keeping system is a pain to start with and has a big learning curve. Those that are integrated into an "anesthesia system" should be superior to a system that's been "adapted" for anesthesia.

It's absurd to have to use a second system just for block notes, as well as having a shared terminal in PACU. Someone has done a poor job of implementation and/or is simply trying to get by on the cheap.
 
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Someone has done a poor job of implementation and/or is simply trying to get by on the cheap.

This is the military, my money is on both.

At the flagship, implementation has been pushed back to late spring 2011. Knowing how things work around here, the implementation date will get pushed back several more months, then we'll have huge integration glitches which will take another several months to resolve, and we should have an actual functioning system by 2012 (just in time for the main ORs to come back online).
 
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